Computational and Experimental Study on Vertical Axis Wind Turbine in Search for an Efficient Design

<p>Wind alone can fulfill most of the energy requirement of the world by its efficient conversion in to energy. Though Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) is more popular but needs high wind speed to generate energy. On the other hand Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) needs low wind speed and can be installed anywhere which are some of the reasons for this research. The main objective of this research is to improve the design and performance of VAWT to make it more attractive, efficient, durable and sustainable. For a VAWT the blades perform the main role to extract energy from the wind. Airfoil is considered as the blade for this new design of VAWT. Airfoil has some good aerodynamic characteristics, match with the characteristics of Savonius type VAWT, such as good stall characteristics and little roughness effect, relatively high drag and low lift coefficient. Integration of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation and wind tunnel experimentation has made the current research more acceptable. 3-Dimensional CAD models of various simple airfoils have been designed in Solidworks. Using these airfoils and other shape, CFD simulation has been performed with five different VAWT designed models. Moving mesh and fluid flow simulation have been developed in CFD software FLUENT. The findings of these numerical simulations provided pressure contour, velocity contour, drag coefficient, lift coefficient, torque coefficient and power coefficient for all these models. Physical models of NACA5510, NACA7510 and semicircular rotors of three bladed are fabricated and tested in-house subsonic wind tunnel. From these experiments dynamic torque has been measured using dynamic torque sensors for all these models at three different speeds. By comparing the numerical and experimental results it can be concluded that NACA7510 air foiled VAWT model gives the better performance at higher Tip Speed Ratio than other two models.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science in Applied Engineering (M.S.A.E.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis (open access)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Year dc:date.available

2014

Author dc:creator

• Bashar, Mohammad M

Contributors dc:contributor

• Aniruddha Mitra
• Cheng Zhang

• ETD
• wind energy
• VAWT
• renewable energy
• clean electricity
• Savonius
• CFD
• Computer-Aided Engineering and Design
• Energy Systems
• Other Mechanical Engineering

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/1184

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu:etd-2252